Joseph Laniel was a French conservative politician of the Fourth Republic

French Fourth Republic

The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II, and suffered many of the same problems...

, who served as Prime Minister

Prime Minister of France

The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...

 for a year from 1953 to 1954. During the middle of his tenure as Prime Minister Laniel was an unsuccessful candidate for the French Presidency, a post won by René Coty

René Coty

René Jules Gustave Coty was President of France from 1954 to 1959. He was the second and last president under the French Fourth Republic.-Early life and politics:...

. Laniel was born in Vimoutiers

Vimoutiers

Vimoutiers is a commune in the Orne department in north-western France.The finish line of the Paris–Camembert bicycle race is Vimoutiers.-History:On 14 June 1944, during the Battle of Normandy, Vimoutiers was bombarded by Allied forces...

, Orne, and died in Paris, France.

Co-founder of the Republican Party of Liberty

Republican Party of Liberty

The Republican Party of Liberty was a right-of-center French political party created at the Liberation and absorbed by the National Centre of Independents and Peasants in 1951...

 (PRL), then of the National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), Laniel's cabinet was overturned after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu

Battle of Dien Bien Phu

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that...

 in Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

 in 1954. He was succeeded by Pierre Mendès France.

Laniel's Ministry, 28 June 1953 – 19 June 1954

• Joseph Laniel – President of the Council
• Henri Queuille
  Henri Queuille
  Henri Queuille was a French Radical politician prominent in the Third and Fourth Republics. After World War II, he served three times as Prime Minister.He was the son of a noblewoman.-First ministry :...
  
   – Vice President of the Council
• Paul Reynaud
  Paul Reynaud
  Paul Reynaud was a French politician and lawyer prominent in the interwar period, noted for his stances on economic liberalism and militant opposition to Germany. He was the penultimate Prime Minister of the Third Republic and vice-president of the Democratic Republican Alliance center-right...
  
   – Vice President of the Council
• Pierre-Henri Teitgen
  Pierre-Henri Teitgen
  Pierre-Henri Teitgen was a French lawyer, professor and politician.Teitgen was born in Rennes, Brittany. Made prisoner of war in 1940, he played a major role in the French Resistance....
  
   – Vice President of the Council
• Georges Bidault
  Georges Bidault
  Georges-Augustin Bidault was a French politician. During World War II, he was active in the French Resistance. After the war, he served as foreign minister and prime minister on several occasions before he joined the Organisation armée secrète.-Early life:...
  
   – Minister of Foreign Affairs
• René Pleven
  René Pleven
  René Pléven was a notable French politician of the Fourth Republic. A member of the Free French, he helped found the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance , a political party that was meant to be a successor to the wartime Resistance movement...
  
   – Minister of National Defense and Armed Forces
• Léon Martinaud-Deplat – Minister of the Interior
• Edgar Faure
  Edgar Faure
  Edgar Faure was a French politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist.-Career:Faure was born in Béziers, Languedoc-Roussillon. He trained as a lawyer in Paris and became a member of the Bar at 27, the youngest lawyer in France to do so at the time...
  
   – Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs
• Jean-Marie Louvel – Minister of Commerce and Industry
• Paul Bacon
  Paul Bacon
  Paul Bacon was a French politician.During World War 2, Bacon was active in the French Resistance. He was a member of Georges Bidault's National Liberation Movement, and distributed a manifesto about trade unionism in December 1940. Bacon was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943.After the war, Bacon...
  
   – Minister of Labour and Social Security
• Paul Ribeyre – Minister of Justice
• André Marie
  André Marie
  André Marie was a French Radical politician who served as Prime Minister during the Fourth Republic in 1948.-Biography:...
  
   – Minister of National Education
• André Mutter – Minister of Veterans and War Victims
• Louis Jacquinot
  Louis Jacquinot
  Louis Jacquinot was a French lawyer and politician, and chief of Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré's office.Jacquinot was born in Gondrecourt-le-Château in 1898. Entering parliament in 1932, he later served for a short time as under-secretary of state for home affairs in Paul Reynaud's cabinet...
  
   – Minister of Overseas France
• Jacques Chastellain – Minister of Public Works, Transport, and Tourism
• Paule Coste-Floret – Minister of Public Health and Population
• Maurice Lemaire
  Maurice Lemaire
  Maurice Lemaire was a French Gaullist politician, born on 25 May 1895 at Gerbépal in the Vosges region: he died in Paris on 29 January 1979.Lemaire’s background was as a railway engineer. He was the Director General of the SNCF following the liberation of France from German occupation...
  
   – Minister of Reconstruction and Housing
• Pierre Ferri – Minister of Posts
• Edmond Barrachin – Minister of Constitutional Reform
• Édouard Corniglion-Molinier
  Edouard Corniglion-Molinier
  General Edouard Corniglion-Molinier aviator and member of the French Resistance, member of the French government during the French Fourth Republic, in the 1950s, movie producer , friend of Marcel Dassault and cousin of Fred Vidal....
  
   – Minister of State

Changes

• 3 June 1954 – Édouard Frédéric-Dupont enters the ministry as Minister of Relations with Partner States.